Jump to full article: Bloomberg News, 2008-10-22
Author: John Lauerman
Intro: Lung cancer's growth and lethal spread may be tied to more than two dozen mutated genes, according to a study that may help doctors identify effective drugs.
About two-thirds of the altered genes hadn't been associated with lung cancer until now, and half of them had never been associated with any cancer, said Matthew Meyerson, a member of the international team that conducted the work. The study was released today by the journal Nature.
Lung cancer grows quickly and is difficult to treat, leaving about 85 percent of patients dead within five years of diagnosis. Most lung cancers are linked to smoking tobacco, yet most smokers don't develop the disease. Understanding what the genes do and how they malfunction may help speed the development of new drugs for lung tumors, which kill more than 1 million people annually worldwide, said Meyerson, a Harvard Medical School pathologist.
``We're seeing more evidence that treatments directed against mutated gene products and proteins are effective for cancer,'' he said yesterday in a telephone interview from his office in Boston.
The findings may help explain the role of cigarettes, which are linked to about 90 percent of lung cancers. The study found smokers' tumors each had an average of about 49 gene mutations, compared with an average of five in the tumors of never-smokers.
Jump to full article » |